Two-career Family

RAY RECCHI Lifestyle Columnist

Won't Ruin The Kids

For years, my wife and I have swal lowed the insults without a peep. But no more.

The next time someone suggests in my presence that kids suffer when both their parents have careers, I'm go ing to let them have it.

In the past, we've ignored such comments from friends and relatives, mostly because they usually were not intended to be insults. Rather, they were the result of a difference in perspective and lifestyle between our gen eration and that of our parents. In our par ents' day, Dad had a career and Mom took care of the house and kids. Usually, it wasn't even discussed, merely assumed.

So the two-career family with kids in day care doesn't seem quite right to many people of that generation.

The other day, for example, my mother mentioned she had spoken to my cousin Linda in Cleveland. "Is she still a nurse?" my wife asked.

"Oh no, she hasn't worked as a nurse in years," Mom said. Then, by way of explana tion, she added, "She's raising her kids."

No more Mr. Nice Dad

Her tone said there was no choice, that it was the only proper thing to do.

I'm sure Mom didn't mean to insult us. But how else could Tina and I interpret it? After all, Tina has worked throughout our mar riage, mostly full time. For many of those years, she attended graduate school while holding a job _ and raising kids, with the help of day care.

All along, we heard such comments from relatives, friends and acquaintances _ in cluding women our own age who decided to forego careers to raise children. Usually, we ignored them as unintended criticism or harmless blather.

For a 19-year-old mother in Michigan, how ever, it was not harmless. Judge Raymond Cashen last month awarded permanent custo dy of Jennifer Ireland's 3-year-old daughter to the girl's 20-year-old father merely be cause Ireland puts the girl in day care while she attends classes at the University of Mich igan.

The father, Steve Smith, lives with his par ents, who said they would help raise the girl.

"It's just unfair. It's a decision based on the 1950s," Ireland said.

Not only that, it's illogical. According to the judge, "A child gains the feeling of securi ty, a safe place by virtue of permanency."

Check out exhibits A, B, C

A logical person might say that the child's sense of security would be undermined by taking her from her mother, with whom she has lived for all of her three years. A logical person might wonder why the father didn't ask for custody until the child was 2.

Apparently, there was no reason to believe the child was mistreated or that Ireland was anything but a kind and caring mother. The judge's decision was based solely on the fact that the girl was in day care.

That's a decision rooted in the past. Ca shen's decision is not only a travesty of jus tice for Ireland, it's an insult to all of us who utilized day care when our kids were small.

And I'm not taking those insults anymore.

Because it isn't true that a woman can't have a career and a family without short changing one of them. And I've got proof.

My wife and I have three children who have never been in trouble and are reason ably well-adjusted, bright, caring people. They have won honors in academics, music, English, drama and debate.

What's more, thousands of other children also have reaped the benefits of my wife's de cision to be a teacher.

On the other hand, we all know a lot of real losers who never spent a day in day care.

In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Judge Cashen was one of them.